The assembly of conventional, heavy duty, utility trailers, and in particular, covered utility trailers often requires special equipment or tools, and routinely involves welding. The need for such special tools and/or welding and the manual skill required to carry out such assembly activities has resulted in these covered utility trailers being manufactured and fully assembled in factories or machine shops, prior to being shipped to distributors and retailers for sale to customers.
While assembly prior to shipping confers certain advantages (for instance, the product is ready for sale once received), the freight costs associated with this type of utility trailer tend to be relatively high. This is because the trailer tends to be a relatively, low-density load when assembled—it is bulky due to its box-like construction, but tends to be relatively, lightweight. As a result, less than optimal use of cargo container space is achieved when shipping these trailers. Once the trailers are shipped, a similar problem may be encountered in respect of storage. The distributor or retailer who receives these utility trailers must have adequate space to store them. Such bulky items require large storage areas.
In light of the foregoing, there is a real need for a covered utility trailer that can be assembled manually in a quick and easy manner without the use of special tools. Such a trailer would tend not to require assembly prior to shipping and accordingly, could be shipped and stored in a more compact and economical fashion thereby obviating the drawbacks associated with known covered utility trailers.
Utility trailers are often provided with rear cargo access doors that are hung on the jambs of the door frame. These cargo doors are vertically hinged such that they swing outwardly of the door frame to give access to the interior storage space of the trailer. To facilitate loading and unloading of the trailer, separate ramp members releasably mountable to the bottom member of the door frame may also be provided. In some cases, these ramps are stored in the interior storage space of the trailer when not in use. In other cases, they may be stored beneath the trailer bed within a purpose-built slot.
While these types of ramps tend to function in a generally satisfactory manner, they do tend to suffer from certain drawbacks. More specifically, the ramps stored within the interior storage space when not in use, tend to take up storage space in the trailer and may knock about when the towing vehicle is in motion, potentially damaging the cargo. Additionally, these types of ramps may be more susceptible to being forgotten, lost or stolen. Conversely, those ramps that are stored beneath the trailer suffer other disadvantages. In particular, those ramps may experience difficulties in deployment and storage. For instance, the ramps may become jammed within the slot due to the accumulation of dirt therein or because the ramp has sustained some damage which has now caused it to become warped and ill-fitting within the slot. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a utility trailer with a versatile and compact ramp that may be stored easily and avoids the foregoing disadvantages.